Choices. Or the Lack of Them.

I have already cast my vote. 

I will be away from home on Election Day, so I sent it in by post. 

And I really struggled with where to where to put my ‘X’. The truth is that I didn’t want to support any of them; that I feel completely betrayed by all of them. Voting matters though and so I gave my support to the candidate who appeared to me to represent the least worst option.

But it wasn’t much of a choice. (And, by the way, how on earth did we end up in a place where 'least worst option' was the best that anyone could offer.)

The Conservative-led governments of the last ten years have:

• Decimated policing (cutting 44,000 officers and staff between 2010-18)


• Decimated the criminal justice system


• Decimated the prison system


• Decimated the probation service


• Decimated pretty much every other part of the public sector


• Overseen a catastrophic increase in child poverty


• Overseen a catastrophic increase in homelessness


• Overseen a catastrophic increase in Foodbank use

And so it goes on.

Austerity was a conscious, deliberate political choice - the cost of which remains greatest for those least able to bear it.

And now the Conservatives are led by Boris Johnson:

• A pathological liar


• A racist (‘piccaninnies’ and ‘watermelon smiles’)


• An Islamaphobe (‘letter boxes’ and ‘bank robbers’)


• A homophobe (‘tank-topped bum boys’)


• A misogynist (‘totty’)


• A man who thinks that the children of single mothers are “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”.


• A man who once characterised the poorest 20% in our communities as “chavs, losers, burglars and drug addicts”.


• A man who once had this to say about working class men: “If he is blue collar, he is likely to be drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless.”


• A man who is not trusted by members of his own party.


• A man who appears not to be trusted by members of his own family.


• A man who is too cowardly to give an account of himself to a BBC journalist.

A man who is utterly unfit to be Prime Minister.

But what of the alternative?

• The Labour Party appears to have lurched as far to the left as the Conservative Party has to the right.


• It is riven by accusations (and evidence) of institutional (and individual) anti-semitism.


• It is led by a man who vast numbers in the electorate simply don’t appear to trust - a man who has faced repeated questions, sustained over a number of years, about his connections with - and sympathies for - known terrorist organisations. Terrorists who murdered police officers. Terrorists who murdered innocent civilians.


• And it has chosen a Shadow Home Secretary who gives every indication of being actively hostile towards policing . (Despite a decade of untold damage to the police service inflicted by the Conservatives, vast numbers of police officers - serving and retired - will find it almost impossible to vote for a party that appears so openly antagonistic towards them.)


• Even some Labour members are telling us to cast our votes elsewhere.

It really isn’t much of a choice.

Whatever happened to political leadership in this country? Whatever happened to the truth? To decency and to standards in public life? To robust but honourable public debate? To the old-fashioned notion of public service?

I am almost fifty years of age and I have never felt more disillusioned with the people who are supposed to be in charge.

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Footnote (i): At the risk of repeating myself… I belong to no party. I never have and I never will. I am not ‘for’ the current Labour Party any more than I am ‘for’ the current Conservative Party. The thing I am actually ‘for’ is better government, better politics and better politicians.

Footnote (ii): Of course, there are some good politicians out there. Some who might actually be great, on both sides of the House. But they are not the ones in charge just now.